NY Sun names fired CBS producer; why naming her is important

After many blogs (Gawker, TV Newser etc.) put out calls for the name of the CBS producer fired this week for plagiarism, David Blum has named her in a story in today's New York Sun. "In an era when plagiarists get dismissed and outed weekly by their employers at news organizations around the country, the decision by CBS News not to disclose the producer's name — and to call an act of flagrant plagiarism an 'omission' — seems curious at best," he writes, correctly. Our background and concerns are here. Then he reveals the name:

...her name is Melissa McNamara, a cbsnews.com Web producer (and herself a blogger for cbsnews.com) who joined the network in October 2005 after working as a news assistant in the Washington bureau of the New York Times and as a researcher at CNN.

Some may wonder why fellow journalists think it's important to name the person. There are three reasons:

1. It's the industry standard. Have a look through our annual plagiarism round-ups on the right hand column of this website. The person is named the vast majority of the time. Even student newspapers do it. Criticism inevitably follows when plagiarists aren't named.
2. It's a necessary act of disclosure. Because, for example, the press would seek to name a congressional staffer who commits a serious ethical lapse, we have to meet the same standard. We disclosure disclose the wrongdoing of people on a daily basis and hold them up to public scrutiny and scorn. Some of these people are public figures; some are not. When a journalism institution suffers an ethical or professional lapse of this nature, we must disclose the details. When we don't, we perpetrate a double standard.
3. It provides accountability for the plagiarist. By not naming the offender, CBS was creating the possibility for this person to apply for new jobs without having to disclose this incident. We're not saying she should be banned from journalism for life; but she shouldn't be able to gloss over an incident of plagiarism or ignore it completely. Her name needs to be public in order to ensure other journalism organizations are aware of whom they're dealing with. Again, we want to emphasize we're not suggesting she should never work in the biz again; that depends on how she handles this incident and works to ensure it never happens again. But potential employers have a need and right to know this about her.

Unfortunately, CBS hit several wrong notes with its handling of this incident. It was not forthcoming and clear in its presentation of the plagiarism; it refused to provide essential details to Public Eye, an internal site explicitly created  to "bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News"; and it refused to name the offender. At this point, we hope this episode becomes a learning experience and impetus for change at CBS. And that appears to be the case, at least according to a New York Times article from today:

CBS News said yesterday it planned to install a new level of editorial oversight to its Web site since  revelations that the CBS anchor Katie Couric read a plagiarized commentary on the site last week.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't offer any further details. It does say that "...CBS said yesterday it was investigating to see if the producer...had written any previous commentaries for Ms. Couric that had been plagiarized." This is an important, necessary step.  Let's hope CBS delivers a full report on its findings and reveals the new level of oversight.